


camera-less

by fingersfallingupwards



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Blow Jobs, Denial, Hamburg Era, Hand Jobs, M/M, McLennon Big Bang 2020, Misunderstandings, Period Typical Attitudes, Referenced prostitution, are we not using the tag?, boys in leather, gay dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:53:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26729983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingersfallingupwards/pseuds/fingersfallingupwards
Summary: The words register and Paul barely keeps back an incredulous laugh. Is Lennon… is he really trying it on with Paul? There’s no hiding the implication; it’s the same way Paul’s approached whores on the street, thriving on the ignominy of it all. Lennon must be taking the piss.If he is having Paul on, well, two can play at that game.Or: John and Paul don't meet at the fete. They meet in Hamburg and come together and apart differently.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 58
Kudos: 88





	1. ticketless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So SOOO much love to the darling beautiful betas johnjie and [drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney](https://drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney.tumblr.com/) . Without them, this would lack flavor and readability, both key components to this DISH.
> 
> So excited about this McLennon reverse BB! Inspirational artwork is from the illustrious [thisbirdhadflown](https://thisbirdhadflownx.tumblr.com/). Hopefully I can include the artwork when we get to the chapter it's in!

+

Paul breaks into the fresh air of the street, the crisp Hamburg evening settling in his lungs like a balm after the sweat and smoke cluttered air of the club. He loves music, he does, but wouldn’t it be nice to play a venue that didn’t leave him feeling half choked with humidity or with his bloody clothes stuck to his skin? If he skipped the leather he’d be better off, but with it would go his careful construction of someone older, capable and cool. The kind of person who could lead a band, instead of just writing songs from the second guitar to fill the space left by innumerable covers.

Agitated steps lead him to a corner, away from the club. He lights a cigarette, trying to breathe in serenity amidst the smoke. Bloody Danny. He’s a decent lad, not bad with his vocals or guitar, but Mary and Joseph, he hasn’t the nose for building a band up proper like, can't give them their own identity. Maybe in Liverpool it was alright, when they were scrapping for gigs and playing any garden party they could squeeze, but here they smear across the Hamburg canvas in bland colors, indistinguishable from any of the other imported rock groups. They need a sound, a distinct harmony to interrupt the tired early morning air, but Danny’s too cowardly to strum anything that the audience doesn’t already love.

Paul kicks his leg back up against the wall, watches the ash slip off the glowing end of his cigarette. There’s nothing doing with their group, and he imagines the view from his bed at home– familiar, yellow-striped wallpaper and Radio Luxembourg mornings. Remembers letters home inked with lies about his and George’s success and adventures, and finds those remembered mornings dimmer for it.

The streets are still teeming despite the hour. It's not so much that people are flooding the paths, but the energy they bring is manic enough to swamp the air. It leaves Paul gasping like he’s in the club again. Fuck this city. He doesn’t want to be here anymore, but he can’t go back either, not now that he’s playing music near every day.

A bloke settles on the wall near him and Paul raises his dwindling cigarette, rueing his distracted waste of it.

Maybe he just needs a better song, a real knock-out to blow past Danny’s hemming and hawing. He’ll bang it out tonight, or this morning as it likely is—

“Hey. Don’t suppose you’re going on, are you?”

The familiar Scouse drawl startles Paul, has him cranking his head round to the bloke beside him. Tall, leather clad, the unavoidable sweat of the city leaving the long line of his nose shiny like a shark fin shearing through the night. His brown eyes squint, and there’s something hesitant and anxious lingering on the edges of his curled lips. Like an animal, nearly.

Paul realizes two things at precisely the same time. The first is that it’s John Lennon. Or, more particularly, _that Lennon,_ as it was always said between shaking heads and clucking tongues. He’s a tangential awareness of Lennon, the way he knows other lads in town, friends of friends and the like. He remembers Lennon has a band, Johnny and the Moondogs, that were swept into Hamburg a year before Paul managed his way off the ferry.

The second thing is that Lennon is as blind as Saul after that encounter with Christ. Can’t see far enough to know his left hand from the right, and perhaps that accounts for the way his gaze roams Paul’s face, seeing but unrecognizing.

Then the words register and Paul sucks in a deep breath, barely keeps back an incredulous laugh.

Is he… is he really trying it on with Paul? There’s no hiding the implication; it’s the same way Paul’s approached whores on the street, heart in his throat and thriving on the ignominy of it all. Still, it isn’t like Paul’s dressed like one, or even that feminine. Surely his sight’s not as bad as that. On the other hand, if he’s approaching him as a bloke…

Paul bites back a groan. Probably taking the piss. God, but if Paul hasn’t heard enough about his eyebrows from Tony bloody Sheridan…

“Well?” Lennon asks, tongue flicking out over his lips, egging on a reply.

Is he joking? The quick, rabbit-like dart of his gaze makes it difficult to parse. If he is having Paul on, well, two can play at that game.

Paul puts out the cigarette and clears his throat. “Yes, if you’re looking.” His syllables are the crisp Queen’s English his mam tried to impress upon him as a child. It’s rusty, lacking practice from years without a warm hand on his head telling him he’s got to keep his r’s crisp and enunciated.

He shifts off the memories with a roll of his shoulders and considers the gag before him. It wouldn’t do for Lennon to recognize him if he hasn’t yet. A grin he can’t quite help spreads over his face. He’s going to spring it on Lennon before Lennon can do it to him, and Christ, what a laugh it’ll be to share with the lads back at the Matchbox.

“How much do you have?” Paul asks, letting his leg come off the wall. He waits with bated breath for the switch to flip, to trumble over him with a laugh, but instead is treated to Lennon looking him up and down, a snide crinkle to his nose.

“How much it cost?” Lennon shoots back.

Paul hems with a lack of knowledge and answers with the same amount that he’d paid the time he’d seen a prossy.

Lennon laughs. “You’re daft. I’ll give you fifteen.”

“Calling me cheap?”

“Young as you are, I’m doing the public a service by helping you practice.”

Paul’s torn between laughter and outrage at Lennon’s daring to call it charity. His sense of humor is almost too much for Paul, and the dead-on face is giving him chest pain as he tries to keep from laughing.

“I’m not all that young. And besides, what makes you think I need practice?” He gives a flicking of his eyes that makes the girls lean closer and their legs fall slightly apart. He expects Lennon to break, to laugh at the over-doneness of it, but the way he goes terribly still sets Paul off-kilter. He straightens, feeling foolish for laying it on so thick—

“I’ll pay for the room.”

Paul blinks, stares at Lennon’s tongue licking out past his lips. The polished Northern wit that usually comes when called abandons him; his mouth is empty and oddly dry in this charged moment.

“Come on,” Lennon says, jerking his chin. He starts down the street. The confidence of his silhouette is interrupted as his head half turns, as if to look back, before stopping. Paul’s stumbling after him and catching up before he quite understands why. Lennon’s stride evens out, his lips curling up even though he doesn’t spare a glance at Paul beside him, watching him in the dim shine of the Reeperbahn’s pink and yellow lights. He’s cool again, no hint of the sweat from earlier, and Paul falls in with his momentum.

Perhaps it’s momentum that explains why he follows Lennon, why he keeps up to a place that rents rooms by the hour, feeling flushed and too fresh under the tired eyes of the owner, who hands them a sticky key without taking down their names.

When the door shuts behind them, Paul feels a strange incredulity crawling into his throat. The lengths Lennon’s gone to for a joke astounds him, shelling out ten marks for the place and all. The room is cramped, just a bed against the wall and a window. Without any lamp, only the glow of the outside street lends enough light for shadows and shapes. It catches the corners of Lennon’s expression as he stares at Paul, eyes darker than Paul knows what to do with. His lips have been frozen since the start as he stares at this lad he’s seen about town with more girls than he can name, but who’s now looking at Paul with some kind of ache in his eyes.

“Come here,” Lennon tries. This time, Paul doesn’t follow, glad that the darkness masking his face is preventing that moment of recognition.

Lennon sighs, grouses, “Did I pay, or didn’t I?”

That unsticks Paul’s tongue. “You didn’t pay at all, if you recall.”

Lennon grins. “Bought the room. And you can stay here for whatever time we don’t use.”

“59 minutes then.” Paul quips, and Lennon laughs, a high, almost sweet sort of sound.

“Christ, I’m not used to whores talking back. German ones hardly know more English than ‘yes, money’ and ‘no anal’.’”

Strangeness settles in Paul’s stomach and he speaks before it can take shape into something heavy and uncomfortable. “Yeah? Make it a lot with German blokes, do you?”

“Girls mostly.” Lennon pauses. “A few men.”

The air fills with edgy unease. Paul shivers, but it doesn’t shake the jitteriness off his skin. Lennon gets closer, leading with fine-boned hands that settle on the line of Paul’s jacket. He slips it off, fingers tracing a line over Paul’s shoulders that makes him fidget. The touch doesn’t stop there, it explores, and Paul finds himself leaning in instead of away.

If Lennon had been rough with it, it might have startled Paul awake. Instead, the way he slips his palms down Paul’s back, cupping his narrow waist, is slow, almost hypnotic. They rest above the crest of Paul’s arse, squeezing there in concert with Lennon’s heavy breathing, and it’s different than with girls. It’s not how Paul thought it would be - not laughable, he means.

The punchline is sitting in his mouth, waiting to bowl Lennon over so they can finally unwind the charade into giggles and leave this tension behind them, but Paul finds himself only growing tauter and more strung out, deeper in their self-made play.

Lennon squints at him and grasps with real desire, a need so blatant it’s almost pitiful, groaning and groping at Paul’s body like a man who’s known real hunger. When he finally slips a hand down to tug at the buttons of Paul’s trousers, Paul realizes he’s already half-hard. It’s not… unheard of. He’s gotten help from mates before in Ivan’s basement, the lights off, all giggles and girls names as they toss off. Lennon takes him in hand and it splits the world of difference between those moments and this one —how gentle he is, how eagerly he smears the pre-come and grins into Paul’s neck as he reaches full stiffness. Lennon wants this, what’s in his hand. His body wriggles and presses against Paul, betraying an aura of rich enjoyment so filthy that Paul feels depraved just by proximity.

It’s just mates helping out, he thinks, blindly slipping his hand down, feeling leather and the worn softness of Lennon’s shirt before reaching the hardness in his trousers. He undoes the button and zip, letting the heavy material sag down. Lennon’s cock sticks out, long and jutting, and Paul startles at the abrupt sight of it. Too much to see.

He hides, burrowing into Lennon’s neck in a mirror position as he clumsily takes it in hand. Lennon keens, the vibration of the movement startling up his body and tightening the hand on Paul’s cock. Paul gasps, eyes falling shut as he gives himself over to sensation. He twists and flicks, dragging his callouses slowly over the sensitive parts before Lennon can catch his breath. Each touch earns a reaction along Lennon, in his grip and pressure. The way they feed into one another is like playing an instrument. Building, receptive, gaining the more he gives into it.

Lennon’s mouth opens over his collar, more teeth than tongue as he pants against Paul’s skin. With a hard bite and soft sound, Lennon spills over his hand, gasping and wringing through the burst of energy from the orgasm. With a swipe of his thumb, Paul’s sent over the edge too.

They come down against the other’s shoulders, pants turning into sighs. Paul’s neck aches and he levers it up, staring at the shadows on Lennon’s face, his parted mouth. Somehow he doesn’t look amused, or satiated. Rather, he seems—

The next moment, the expression shuts down. He jerks away from Paul with a half shove and fixes himself with nary a look before he’s darting out the door.

Paul stares, gobsmacked, for a moment, then slowly wipes the mess onto his shirt and adjusts his pants.

He never had a chance to utter the punchline. Indeed, he’s forgotten the joke entirely.

+

Paul returns to the Matchbox club dazed and very much missing the ground that used to be under his feet. The bunks lining the walls are quiet with the sun nearly up. Danny’s gone to bed, but George is there peeling off his clothes. He gives Paul a bleary look up and down.

“Alright, Paul?”

“Alright, George.” He isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. The only thing he wants is to sleep on the whole mess. The mute ache in Lennon’s hooded brown eyes flashes when Paul closes his eyes, so he stares at the single glowing light, watching the dark shapes settle in his periphery as he changes.

“Going to go mad staring like that,” George says.

“Going to go mad here,” Paul says as he shrugs out of his shirt.

“Ah, a touch of rabies?” At Paul’s bemused look George points at the bite mark, still fresh and glistening.

“It was just a laugh,” Paul snaps. It was all only a laugh, the entire time, until it wasn’t. Until Lennon called their mutual bluff.

“It doesn’t look it. I wouldn’t like anyone to get their teeth that deep into me.” George shrugs off Paul’s hot look, slumping into his bunk like he plans to die there peacefully. He clicks off the light as he does, leaving Paul in the dark with his aching shoulder and racing thoughts. It’s worse this way, reminds him of before, with his eyes shut. Paul scrubs at his lids.

It was a bloody joke. But the hotel owner didn’t grin at their antics, only glanced over the two blokes in leather heading for the room. Just another depravity amid the parade of hundreds. Paul lets his hand linger on his shoulder, feeling out the indents of teeth and remembering Lennon’s touch. It hadn’t been camp, or overblown. It hadn’t been anything less than wanting and taking. The more Paul thinks, the more he suspects that the look on Lennon’s open face had been primal, wide-eyed fear... because Lennon had never been joking.

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This story will be four chapters and I hope to have it all written and up by October 30th! 
> 
> Please consider commenting if you enjoyed this at all. Next chapter will be up in a week or two~💜
> 
> If you have time, please read [thisbirdhadflown's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbirdhadflown/pseuds/thisbirdhadflown) BB entry on their page.
> 
> If you have more time, please send a nice ask to [ChutJeDors.](https://chut-je-dors.tumblr.com/) They helped organize this event and had a serious stroke of bad luck, so any love you can send their way would be lovely! 💜


	2. placeless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intriguing, entirely too intriguing is what John Lennon is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my beta johnjie! You can find them [@drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney](https://drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney.tumblr.com/)❣️
> 
> WARNING: John's "cripple act" comes into play. We do not condone.

+

Paul’s leery about leaving their shanty the next day. The unsteady happening with Lennon has left him feeling like he’s on the ferry again, mind rocking to-and-fro as he tries to make sense of it. The last thing he wants is to encounter Lennon in the outside world, to see him quirk pale lips, point and exclaim, “That’s the one right there, he actually went through with it!”

And, if he hadn’t been joking, had actually been that desperate and longing… well. Paul doesn’t much care to encounter that fathomlessness either.

George raises his single bushy eyebrow when Paul mutters about seeing to letters and things.

“Better at the pub, isn’t it?” George reasons. He’s fair to do so. Their ramshackle living space is claustrophobic, musky from sweat and too much unwashed everything. Even with the windows open it has the feeling of being underground somehow. They sleep and fuck here, but otherwise, their time is better spent anywhere else in the city.

Danny leans impatiently against the door. Paul thinks, not for the first time, that if he didn’t look quite so old and cool Paul would have usurped him for lead vocal a long time ago. 

“You need brekky at least,” George says, and as yesterday all Paul had eaten were the biscuits Dot had sent alongside a three page letter he’d hardly read, it’s certainly true.

“Lunch, isn’t it?” Danny corrects.

“My first meal is always breakfast, even if I eat it at six at night,” George decides. “Is Dieter coming too?”

“We’re already supposed to be meeting him.” Danny taps his fingers on his arm and Paul pulls himself out from his bunk. He can’t afford to miss a proper meal. His stomach already feels curled and too small, sucking the flat of his belly into itself.

They have breakfast or lunch at a cramped place on the corner. Their club is further from the city center and the Top Ten, where Johnny and the Moondogs feature, but with Paul’s luck it would be today that their paths cross amid the daylight. He can imagine Lennon blinking, then grinning. “You’re that McCartney! How’d you like my hand on your cock?”

There are no other Liverpool groups at the shop, though. There never are, really, because this end of town is the lowest you can go. Still, Paul remains hunched over, eyes roving for a glimpse of auburn and leather.

“Hullo Dieter!” Danny calls merrily.

Dieter arrives and settles into a chair beside him, a grin on his narrow face.

“Good _Morgen_.”

“Afternoon, it is,” George chimes in.

Paul grumbles, earning a flat look from Danny and an amused brow from Dieter. Dieter is a fine drummer, considering their own was pitched back to Liverpool before they could disembark for smuggling illicit materials. They’d thought they’d all been sunk with Mark’s foolishness, but instead they’d shifted the extra weight and made an inroad into Germany. They’d only brought Mark on for Hamburg anyway.

Dieter’s a decent lad, but there’s something perennially condescending about him; he finds too much amusement in what they do and how they talk. Playing along with Danny’s jibes about speaking Scouse on stage, and then giggling with groups of his college friends after, pointing and talking in German. Paul doesn’t care for it.

None of it’s been the standard of playing he thought it might be. His lip curls as he looks at George. Doesn’t care, does he? Not when he’s having all the sex and beer he likes. Well, Paul wants more.

His gaze catches on a bit of leather, and his mulish thoughts still into heightened anxiety. He looks again, over at a corner where two men sit together. It isn’t Lennon. Paul exhales for a minute, letting his relieved eyes drag over the cigarettes and coffee between them, leather jackets and trousers… their calves hooked. Paul realizes it with a start and peels his attention away, only to cast it back in the next moment. On the surface they seem perfectly casual, but the steady motion of one foot against another has him flushing.

Two days ago he might not have noticed or seen anything in it. He does see something now; can feel big hands tracing his shoulders.

Dieter giggles and Paul’s attention snaps over, realizing Dieter’s been watching while George and Danny discuss their limited meal options with relish.

Dieter lights a cigarette and muses, “The English are such prudes.”

“Christ, after what you seen us do, can you really still say that?” Danny demands.

“In ways that matter, certainly.” He taps his ash, gives Paul a knowing look that sends a scarlet flush over his skin.

“Fuck off,” Paul grouses, but it only makes Dieter grin, condescending, playful. Maybe even camp.

God, maybe Dieter’s one of them. Paul tries not to stare at him, but for the rest of the meal, he can’t help but wonder. There must be a sign, an overdone flick of his wrists as he reaches for his fork, but there aren’t any tells as he cuts a corner off his steak.

There hadn’t been last night either.

He grits his teeth and vows to throw the whole joke in Lennon’s face the next time they meet, tear him down good and proper. Whatever it takes to make it clear that Paul didn’t, that Paul isn’t—

+

Weeks pass and the flushed, exhausting nature of their work leaves little time for Paul to ponder the matter. There’s little space for any thought at all, between rocketing up on prellies and floating down through the thick haze of beers amid their rollicking sets. He enjoys performing; it’s an irreplaceable thrill, even in their small club.

Under the lights, things are much simpler. He can be hard on Danny sometimes, he muses to himself. George should be enjoying the bounty offered to them. But see, he’s always been a bit too forgiving when drunk. That thought doesn’t stop him from slapping Danny’s shoulder, or accepting a cheery grin from Dieter as he stumbles away with a girl through the back area of the club for a quick knee trembler against the wall.

Paul climbs the steps out of the club in search of a little air. He’s long since stopped searching for puffy auburn hair and leather, which makes Lennon’s approach all the more sudden.

“Alms, alms, alms for the poor,” Lennon croons, coming up from behind with a crooked back and hooked hands. Paul’s laughing before he can even be afraid.

“Yer daft,” Paul says in his thickest accent.

Lennon raises a thick brow and says in Scottish tones, “Feel a big man, do ye? Mocking me comely brogue?”

Paul laughs harder, marvelling at Lennon’s revolving door of interesting acts. He can’t hardly think of a more engaging bloke. Their gazes meet, glittering brown eyes quietly pleased with their own capability. A pang of sympathy hits Paul’s stomach. The idea of throwing the charade in his face and ripping into him feels a cruel one.

It’s not Lennon’s fault he is the way he is— queer, Paul means. Paul’s used to taking the piss out of queers in jokes and when he happens across them in the street, but he’s thought twice about it since his mate Colin gave him the beating of his life for mocking a cripple on the bus. When he returned home and explained his injuries, red-faced, his father only finished his crossword square and mused, “You well-earned that then, didn’t you?”

Paul had slunk to his bed and avoided Colin for a week until the air cleared.

The sudden compassion he feels startles him, but has him softening his vowels all the same. Maybe it’s just the squirrelly way Lennon looks, like he’d cut his own throat trying to escape the noose.

“What do they do up North for such charity cases?” Paul affects his most BBC air and earns an insouciant smile.

“So you’re taking charity, then?” Lennon asks, and Paul blinks, startled from the pivot.

“Is that you then, a charity case?” Paul smirks. “Thought that was me.” He still remembers the bold, foolish way Lennon tried to scam him into thinking it was a favor done for him. The conniving gall of it. Of course, even at the bigger club, Lennon can’t be making much more than Paul. He’s skint as a well-picked bone, all spare funds gone to food, drink, and the occasional whore.

He flushes then, cottoning on too late to the trajectory of the conversation. Lennon’s eyes stare myopically at Paul’s hands around his box of cigarettes, and Paul abruptly changes his mind about starting one. He looks at Lennon’s face, at the hunger there, and thinks about it again, about Lennon’s big hands, the hooked nose he’d buried against his neck. Those thin lips parting.

Paul looks down, feeling perhaps too drunk to manage his eyes.

Lennon exhales. “I haven’t the money for a room.”

“Me neither.” Paul says, ignoring the strange unmet expectation under his relief.

Lennon laughs, seems to think it’s a joke. “What are you here for anyway? A bit far from the Crown Jewel, aren’t you?”

“Wanted to make music.” Paul shrugs.

Lennon goggles. “Came here before us, did you? Hit with a splat and now you’re… Christ, I thought we were the first,” he says, changing his sentence suddenly. “Maybe it was only from Liverpool then.”

Paul shakes his head, trying to untangle the lies and the truth. “It’s not like that. We just… I want to write new music, not just play out the old. That takes a proper band to do.”

“I know,” Lennon says, suddenly serious. He drags his shoe against the pavement. “Write a bit of it meself, actually.”

Paul’s interest blooms. He turns his body fully to Lennon, who stares straight ahead.

“Do you?”

“Scraps,” he demurs.

“Scraps is more than anyone else.” Paul bites his tongue against a wave of requests— g _et a guitar, show me, let’s jam._ He wonders, not for the first time, what he’s doing with this game. He huffs a frustrated breath and lets his attention wander to the maw of an alley down the street, gaping and dark.

“Oh,” Lennon exhales. “That’s an idea, of course.”

Paul startles, only has a few seconds to wonder _what is_ before Lennon slinks towards the side of the alley, flashing him a Cheshire grin as he walks in.

Paul should walk away from this whole misunderstanding. He could, too; feels for a moment like his head is floating above his body, separate. The time before stirs in his periphery, the hot roughness of it compared to the slick trembler he had last night with a bird. He can’t help but feel astir from the contrast. It’s just the drink, he thinks.

“Coming?”

Intriguing, entirely too intriguing is what John Lennon is.

He looks both ways down the abandoned street and stumbles in, not half sure what he expects to happen. Some part of him tenses, like he’s about to be jumped by the Moondogs, but Lennon’s smell comes to him, close, and then the touch of a hand.

His breathing is louder in the dark, and Paul tries to stifle the sound, but only makes himself light-headed. He feels like there isn’t enough light, or air, like he’s cut off from the rest of the world. Even the passing cars sound like they’re coming from the other end of a phone line.

“You know,” Lennon starts, his breath brushing Paul’s neck, sour with German beer. “First time I saw you, I thought you looked like Elvis.”

Paul shivers. It’s all he tries to do, to be like Elvis, but the compliment lands oddly, feels strange against his skin. He’s never thought of Elvis this way, with another lad pressing against him. Lennon’s hands fumble at his neck, slip lower over his torso, and hit the broad buckle of his belt.

Lennon exhales. “It’s just a mutual charity, this.”

“Yeah,” Paul manages, already feeling out of breath.

And then Lennon drops to his knees. Paul’s mouth goes dry.

Paul should be demanding a stop to this, but all he can think about is Lennon’s generosity. Birds have done a whole manner of things for him as favors, but he didn’t know blokes could be so giving. He and his friends have always sought their own release, prioritising it without guilt or hesitation. But Lennon’s doing him first again, like he wants to touch Paul. It makes him feel twisty inside, too vulnerable… A feeling that only increases as Lennon takes him out, fingers clumsy with what Paul can only call eagerness.

The first touch of his tongue sends Paul’s head craning back into the brickwork. He doesn’t register the pain, only his own gasps. Fuck, he can barely make out Lennon, and the darkness paired with the slow exploratory sensation makes his toes curl. It feels sloppy, like it’s Lennon’s first try at it, but he only gags on his first attempt to take Paul inside his mouth. There’s a dogged stubbornness to him that makes Paul’s eyes roll into the back of his head.

Somehow, he thought he’d be able to tell if it was a blokes tongue, but Lennon’s tongue is the same as a bird’s, warm and flexible as it traces the shape of Paul’s cock. The hands on his thighs, however, as much of a handhold as a fetter against sudden jolts, are not at all feminine. They almost wrap around the whole front of his thigh. He thinks about them on his cock again, whines when Lennon raises one to grasp at what he can’t swallow.

Paul’s fingers slink down to Lennon’s head, gripping soft and slightly greasy hair. He explores the short ends of it, tugs, and earns a vibration along his cock that only makes him pull harder.

The next choked moan around his cock sets Paul off. He comes in little jerks that have Lennon spluttering in the darkness as he pulls himself off and away from Paul’s hands.

His lungs heave in violent protest as he comes down from the orgasm. He barely has a grip on himself when he hears a belt clicking, feels Lennon’s body rutting against his.

Paul blindly seeks out the hard line of his cock, hands slow but willing, and pulls it root to tip. Lennon groans near his ear, mouth finding places to suck along his neck. The flesh he mouths feels almost cold when he releases it to pant.

A bloke leaving marks. Lennon leaving marks. Saying he looks like Elvis.

“Fuck,” Paul curses, twisting faster until Lennon’s whole body convulses with it and Paul feels warm wetness splatter across his hand and arm in a silent spill. Lennon groans against Paul’s neck. His teeth tease the edge of a bruise for a moment more before he releases it.

The alleyway is quiet. Paul is reeling, bouncing between his adrenaline high and a growing discontent.

“Your shirt,” Lennon says, interrupting his thoughts. “Lend me your shirt.”

“Why?” Paul asks.

“This mess is yours, isn’t it?”

Paul’s mouth falls open. The dark of the alley saves his blush from being seen as he realizes if Lennon pulled off, then his face must be…

“ ‘Course.” Paul strips off his leather jacket and then the shirt. Nothing to see with light like this anyway. He hands it to Lennon who takes it, wipes himself over in the dim light and then hands it back. Paul cleans his own arm and hands, suddenly noticing the drip of come. He pulls on his jacket and shoves the soiled shirt in his pocket.

They should leave. Paul’s stomach feels unwell, but even still, he can’t seem to walk away from this place. With his feet stubbornly planted, he reaches for the next best thing and lights a cigarette. The flame of the match illuminates his face as he raises it to his lips. His eyes flicker up and Lennon is watching him now, face and hair scraped over. Hair a mess from where Paul…

His eyes spark with something. Paul thinks Lennon must finally recognize him in this orange warm light, but all he says is, “Have one for me?”

Paul lights it on the end of his own and hands it over. Lennon’s long fingers brush his as he takes it, and Paul pulls his hand back, wipes it on his trousers.

Lennon doesn’t notice. He takes a long suck on the filter and then nods.

“Right.”

Without another word, he turns and heads for the entrance of the alley.

Paul watches him stop at the mouth, jerk his head both ways, puff for a few moments as a car passes, and then vanish down the street.

Paul collapses against the building, feeling trembly and sick. He isn’t queer. He’s never had a thought about another bloke below the belt, or their lips, before now.

Though, that’s not quite true, he realizes with an unsettled feeling. Early mornings that weren’t quite the Radio Luxembourg variety. He’s had dreams about blokes, but nothing like he’s dreamt about girls. Men he’d seen on the docks in his kitchen, doing dishes of all things. They’d wring out the thinning towels between both hands, spilling water over their closed fists. Towel after towel got this treatment and barely a thing was washed by the end of it. Hardly intelligible, but it had him waking up in a sweat. His own mind disoriented him, but he never counted it as a mark against himself. There was no accounting for his own unconscious mind putting things out like an abstract printer. He was just having dreams; it didn’t _mean anything._ It hadn’t before now, at least.

Paul taps his ash and sighs.

He isn’t queer and he doesn’t get John Lennon, but he enjoys it in a way he can’t consider head on. Won’t consider.

Like a dream, he just needs to wake up from it, he decides, crushing out the remains of the light with his foot and heading towards the alley entrance.

Whatever it is, it’s nothing that belongs in the waking world.

+

He keeps it separate for all of two days, and then, like night and day, it collides on stage. He’s spinning, a little drunk, dehydrated as he reaches for the tuning pegs on his guitar. One more hour in the set.

Danny sways with his microphone. “That was ‘Tutti Frutti _,_ ’ our favorite Little Richard number. Now we’ve got… We’d like to try an original composition.”

The crowd lets out a dissatisfied grumble.

“I know, I know,” Danny soothes. “Not our usual style, but when you’ve got the next Buddy Holly in the band, there’s only so much you can do.”

Paul rolls his eyes. Hardly the tune Danny sung when they rowed about it earlier. He’s professional now, so Paul has to thank small mercies as he looks out at the malcontented crowd—

His stomach drops, his eyes chasing back over the row of heads. After weeks of jumping at shadows, every hint of burnished auburn, he’s almost sure his eyes are fooling him.

They aren’t. Standing beside a contingent of leather-clad lads Paul knows are the Moondogs, John Lennon stares up at Paul, brow furrowed with cresting understanding.

“Give it up, for Liverpool’s own Paul McCartney!”

Lennon’s expression clears and Paul’s stomach drops.

Caught.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> To rage about Paul McCartney talking about gay dreams and not reading into them, click [HERE.](https://fingersfallingupwards.tumblr.com/post/629237082782662656/drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney)
> 
> Thanks for reading~ leave a word if you feel inclined❣️ Next bit will be out in a week or two (⺣◡⺣)♡*


	3. rhythmless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Tonight, he’s thinking of cameras as he watches Lennon walk beside him. Brown eyes have drifted shut against the cool blue of the night. It hardly makes a difference, Paul thinks, with how blind Lennon is, if he wanders through the world eyes open or closed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dearest johnjie. thank you for your britpicking, sentence/dialogue flow, and emotional support! find this darling human @ [drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney](https://drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney.tumblr.com/)❣️
> 
> Gratitude again for this beautiful and inspiring artwork to the lovely [thisbirdhadflownx](https://thisbirdhadflownx.tumblr.com/)💜

+

Paul can’t remember playing his new song. That memory slips sideways, along with his awareness of the crowd and the outside world. Adrenaline narrows his focus down to John bloody Lennon squinting at him, recognizing at last. The song happens, and then the rest of their set, somehow. Paul staggers off the stage as Danny gives their usual parting remarks.

Escape is the first thing on Paul’s mind. Getting away before Lennon can corner him. With all the Moondogs behind him he could easily beat the stuffing out of Paul; he’s seen it on the streets with queers. It wouldn’t matter none that Paul isn’t and never was, had only been following Lennon’s cue. Lennon might do it only for Paul pulling the wool over his eyes. No man likes the feeling of being had.

He’s halfway down the narrow back hallway to their dorm when a hand catches his wrist.

Paul seizes, his arm flinging up violently. Lennon steps out of the way, expression surprised but grinning.

“Feisty, aren’t you? I heard that about Allerton lads.”

“You heard nothing,” Paul spits, his hands clenching in front of him. He doesn’t bother to smooth his accent, and the Scouse tones have Lennon smirking.

“But aren’t you that Macca? I seen you around, you know. At the shops, and in your little school uniform. Smart that.” The childlike delight in Lennon’s grin has never unnerved Paul so much, never felt eerie or pointed until now. The double edge of it fills Paul with unease. He slants his body away.

“What if I am?” Paul demands.

“They teach you clever little tricks at the Institute,” Lennon says. “I shoulda thought of that scam.” Paul furrows his brow, unable to make sense of it, but Lennon’s eyes flicker over his shoulders. He looks as cagey as Paul feels.

“Look,” he continues. “Meet me in front of the park statue at three.”

_Fuck off_ and _why?_ both fight for space in his mouth, but before Paul can settle on an answer Lennon has disappeared back into the club. Paul stands alone in the hallway, holding another choice in his hands.

+

He tries to sleep; really he does. Nothing good can come from sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, that’s his father’s adage. Paul’s been so good about listening to it up to this point. Yes, he snuck out in drainies to meet the odd bird, and maybe he misled his father about the details of this trip, but overall Paul’s kept his nose clean as Buckingham Palace. It doesn’t feel right to have this turn up for his trouble.

Meeting Lennon won’t improve the mishmash of unsettlement in his chest— in fact, he rather suspects it might only make it worse. Even still, curiosity gnaws at him. What does Lennon want? It could be a trap… but he had looked uneasy at the club, had seemed to share Paul’s apprehension at being seen.

Half two sneaks around with Paul in his bed, sweaty and sleepless. Then quarter to three comes trickling closer. Lennon might already be there, burning down a cigarette with that uneasy expression he works so hard to keep off his face, like anyone who saw it might use it for kindling. Paul doesn’t get that vulnerability; is almost sure he never saw it at all among that brash surety. But then that’s not quite true, he thinks. He remembers it there, glinting along the hard lines of his face in the dark…

With five minutes left, Paul all but falls out of bed in his rush.

Danny startles from his bed, reading a book. “God, where are you off to then?”

George chimes in from where a girl is sucking his cock. “Left… left the kettle on in Liverpool, didn’t he?” His voice breaks off into moans. Paul ignores the both of them as he crams on his leather coat and dashes out the door.

He bursts onto the street, lungs heaving from want of oxygen. He’s not half sure what he’s doing, or what he expects. Maybe he can tell Lennon the truth and they can finally laugh about it together like they should have before any shady hotel room or alleyway, before Lennon got his teeth into Paul’s shoulder. If anyone can make it something funny and alright, Paul thinks it might be John Lennon.

He pants as he turns the corner onto the park, his arrival heralded by the bell chiming three.

For a moment he doesn’t see Lennon among the trees and shrubs, but then the glow of embers catches his gaze and Lennon is there, silhouette melding with the statue. The terseness on his face melts away with Paul’s appearance, and Paul can’t help the relaxing of his own shoulders.

“Didn’t think Inny boys cut to class so close to the nub,” Lennon muses as Paul approaches, flicking his cigarette away.

Paul frowns. “Not in the Inny anymore, am I?”

“In Hamburg,” Lennon agrees, eyes glinting. “With Danny and the Rollickers. Not from London after all, are you?”

Paul shifts, feels caught out anew. “If you’d had your glasses on you would’ve known.” He half expects Lennon to box his ears, but instead he throws his head back and laughs.

“Maybe, but it was such a good con!” he crows. “If I’d thought of it we could’ve shared a corner and hustled together. Only thing better than sex is getting paid for it, eh?”

Understanding finally dawns on Paul and he flushes. The idea of John Lennon prowling for men on a corner settles on him uncomfortably. But then again, hadn’t he said he’d had blokes before?

“Did you reel anyone in?” Lennon asks, an eager glint in his eyes.

“Only you,” Paul admits. It lands oddly on Lennon’s face, transfigures it beyond what Paul can read, so he goes on. “Only one fool enough.”

“You’re the one fool enough to put out without pay,” Lennon replies, but he seems thoughtful, distracted.

“Got you to pay for the room, didn’t I?” Paul shoots back, unsure what point he’s making.

“Aye, all fifty-nine minutes of it,” Lennon jokes and Paul laughs. It’s strange, discussing it out in the air, circling the topic without uttering it into existence. It makes it better in Paul’s chest, somehow, like he’s finally found a compartment to slot the situation into, with both of them acknowledging and making light of it.

“We’re square.”

“How generous of you, Mister McCartney.” The name sounds nice, the way Lennon says it. Paul is overwhelmed by relief that he doesn’t have to hide anymore.

Lennon ducks from Paul’s eyes, and Paul looks away, certain he’s been grinning like a loon. There’s no time to worry because Lennon hooks an arm around his shoulder.

“Come on.” It’s like the first night, and like before Paul falls into step beside him.

They’re of a height, and their strides line up as they leave the shadowy elms of the park and enter the stark illumination of the Reeperbahn.

Paul doesn’t ask where they’re going, isn’t afraid it might turn skewed like before. Tension still lingers between them but it feels different; less like strangers searching, more as though they’re finally on the same page, regarding one another on equal ground. Paul feels dizzy with it.

In the light, he can see Lennon’s exchanged the dark leather Paul’s grown familiar with for a red jacket. It looks thinner, comfortable. The sort of thing Paul might see at the docks, and it strikes him now how much of a Liverpool boy Lennon is, same as Paul.

Paul’s fingers don’t itch for the camera’s clarifying lens the way his brother’s do. Mike is always bemoaning sunsets or a bird diving from the sky, “If only I had my camera!” It seems too obsessive, that constant need to keep things frozen, although Paul does understand it in part. He enjoys being the subject of the lens, the way it traces his body onto paper. He can see his own self laid out, and even pose for it the way that everyday life doesn’t allow. It’s a controlled instant, a representation that he loves to twist with his features… but turning it on other people has never held much interest for him. He’d rather keep them and those moments stored up in his memory, where his unconscious mind might make edits, or let any unbeautiful, difficult remembrance fade into the paper with time.

Tonight, he’s thinking of cameras as he watches Lennon walk beside him. Brown eyes have drifted shut against the cool blue of the night. It hardly makes a difference, Paul thinks, with how blind Lennon is, if he wanders through the world eyes open or closed.

They open, lids flickering as if from sleep, and glance over at Paul.

Paul flushes for his staring, but the embarrassment fades when Lennon whistles a few lines. It’s Paul’s song, the one he was playing at the club. Paul’s stunned to hear it reflected back at him.

“Remember that, do you?” Paul hardly remembers its debut performance himself. He was only thinking of Lennon, of what might happen, and yet here they are, Lennon rendering it in clear tones that cut through the cool night air.

_What do you think?_ Paul barely stops the question from leaping from his mouth. He keeps his gaze cool, and Lennon returns it with a shrug.

“Something in it, melodically.” His eyes are sharp, almost playful. “Could do with a few lyric changes. You rhyme like Little Bo Peep.”

Instead of riling, Paul finds himself laughing. “You think you could do it better, do you?”

“I know I could, Miss Muffet.”

Paul rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning, can’t help the bubbling feeling from Lennon’s approval, the way he takes Paul’s song seriously and turns it over between his hands like it’s precious material he might craft with.

“Whatever you say, Lennon,” Paul retorts.

“John,” he corrects and Paul’s pace falters. The word rings with the unspoken _after all we’ve done,_ and Paul’s frozen again. He stops in the middle of the street and John, stopped a few paces away, swallows and repeats, “Just John will do.”

_John._ Paul recovers himself, sticks out his hand like his proper mam taught him. “Paul.”

John laughs, as though amused by this propriety amidst the wreckage of what they’ve already done, but he closes the gap and finishes the grip. Paul swallows against the feeling of John’s hand, can’t manage to stop the way his eyes flicker down to take in its shape and long lines in the light.

He looks up to see John watching him, lips parted. He looks famished again, suddenly—

The door swings open from the club they’re in front of. They pull apart as a couple staggers onto the street. Blue satin suits shine on stage and rock music pours through the gap before falling mute again with the door’s closing.

“That’s Rory Storm and the Hurricanes,” Paul supplies. He leans into the old familiar feeling of envy.

John takes the diversion and runs. “They’ve a keen drummer. The best on the strip.”

“I’ll get him in my band one day,” Paul avows. He’ll have the best Liverpool can offer.

“Your band?” John asks, eyebrow raising.

“Soon to be,” Paul replies, cool and certain. More than ever, after hearing John whistle his song. _Something in there._ Danny doesn’t stand a chance.

John grins. “No you won’t.”

“Why not?” Paul demands.

“Because you’ll be joining my band, to write songs with me,” John decides.

Paul’s chest swells like rising bread with giddiness. “Am I?” he asks, struggling for aloofness.

“Most definitely,” John replies. “Only the best for my stock. Going to the toppermost of the poppermost, we are.”

Paul wants to argue, _you’ve only seen me once_ , but he can practically taste their success. They click well, and he knows it’ll be better together. That future flickers before his eyes; sharing the stage with John, crafting songs together like rungs in their own ladder, taking them to that fantastical place John’s just described. John is that— fantastical. Paul’s seen him mangling lyrics but holding the crowd in his hand with just the rasp of his voice. John dares stick out where anyone else might put their head down and Paul’s drawn to it, incomprehensibly.

“Suppose it might be alright,” Paul says. “I’ll have to think it over, of course.”

John only grins. “Naturally.”

Is two days too soon? Can Paul manage to wait three before coolly ringing up with his news? Once he’s got his foot in the door he can wedge it wide enough to smuggle George though. They’ll need a brilliant guitarist to build the riffs Paul’s already stringing together in his mind. They can leave this city, and Danny, and Dieter, in the lurch where they belong—

“And it’s just smart, isn’t it?” John muses.

“What is?” Paul asks.

“The two of us in a band together, considering.” Brown eyes flicker over him, looking in a way John’s been careful not to in the light.

Considering… Paul wants to feign ignorance, but he’s cottoned on to John’s mind, can sense the way it works. He knows all too well what that look means, has been rocked by the shockwaves from where it leads.

Suddenly, cracks run along the shiny image of the future. The way John looks at him feels less equal and more assured _._ The implications of what playing together means hits Paul too abruptly, too heavily. He feels like his kneecaps have been blown out beneath him. The real reason John wants him in the band doesn’t have shite to do with his music, does it?

“I said I’d think about it.” he snaps out.

John’s expression cools instantly, shifts from intimate regard to the sharp judgement of a total stranger faster than Paul thought possible.

“Doesn’t much matter to me.”

Paul feels hot in the face, too full of the truth of how much it _did_ matter to John. It was all John anyway, never Paul from the start. He had just tripped along, but now John thinks Paul’s like him. He _isn’t._

“I wasn’t—” Paul starts.

“Me neither,” John confirms, bored.

Paul grits his teeth. “I wasn’t on the game that night. Never was. I thought it were a joke.”

This, Paul realizes instantly, is actually the moment with the fullest punchline. Even in the middle of their messy fiddling, there would never have been this light and clarity and sudden distrust shaking John to the core.

He should feel triumphant for finally getting to see its effect, finally launching this, his hidden weapon. Instead, his stomach roils as if in revolt.

Whatever high ground Paul thought he might earn from poking the bear slips away from beneath his feet as John turns on him, nostrils flared.

“Oh aye? You didn’t take much convincing, did you? Don’t remember you laughing when I had me hand down your trousers. Stalking me down alleyways just to get your hand on my cock, Jesus. You wanted it, didn’t you? Fucking queer.”

Each word is like a hammer blow, shattering the good feelings of the night. He never should have said it. Now John unloads his vitriol and Paul isn’t ready for how the softness between them turns sharp edged. God, it aches after the swell of hope, the feeling of John’s warm regard.

Worse still, though, is to be confronted with the stark fact of Paul’s own actions. He’d shied from looking their ugliness head on, but there’s no hiding from John’s words. He’s deftly cruel with the truth, and his goring words spill Paul’s meagre self-preservation onto the concrete with his half-understood dreams for anyone to see. Anyone walking by must _know_ about him, see what he’s always kept out of even his own sight. 

Paul pulls away, tries to scrape up some defence to hide the stricken redness of his face. John bares his teeth in a facsimile of a smile.

“You’re lucky these blokes don’t speak English, or you’d be a smear on the street! I’d do it myself, but no… you’d only get off on it, wouldn't you?” With that last snarling remark John turns and stalks away, leaving Paul glassy-eyed and alone in a strange land.

+

By the time Paul arrives back at the Matchbox, he feels a shell of himself. The paleness of his face is echoed, distorted, in the white-anger on Danny’s as he walks into their room.

“What is it?” Paul asks, mouth numb.

“They caught George,” Danny spits. “He’s being deported for being a fucking child. It’s over.”

Paul licks his dry lips. “You mean… we’re leaving?” 

“Yeah, we’ve fucking lost it. We can try and find another guitarist, but two German blokes is hardly the Liverpool band advertised—"

“Thank god,” Paul says, and pushes past Danny’s bewildered face to fall bonelessly into his bunk. He closes his eyes against the rotten mess of the night, feels it turning ill and awful in his stomach. He’s ready to leave Hamburg and its glitz and lure of sex and success behind him and well in his edited memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading❣️❣️❣️
> 
> Paul probably wouldn't know that no one bites back the way John does... alas...
> 
> Last chapter in like a week or so. ish. ❣️ I still feel like I'm getting away with murder with this story but ya'll are egging me on so...
> 
> Leave a thought or comment if you feel like it, they make me feel nice :) ❣️

**Author's Note:**

> Bother me on [TUMBLR](https://fingersfallingupwards.tumblr.com/)


End file.
